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The Real Reason We Watch the Tour de France

During the final week of the 2015 Tour de France, its eventual winner, Chris Froome, had urine thrown in his face and accusations thrown at his incredible performance. The former allegedly came from a lunatic among the otherwise civil, if easily excitable, throngs lining the road up to the Côte de la Croix Neuve; the latter from a French television commentator who said Froome’s bike looked like it was “pedaling itself.” On cue, three-time Tour winner, Greg LeMond, devout critic of Lance Armstrong and dirty cycling, told the Associated Press that he wouldn’t be surprised if riders had tiny motors hidden inside their bottom brackets. LeMond, unlike the urine-thrower, had not lost control of his faculties; the Union Cycliste Internationale, cycling’s governing body, actually spot-checks racers' bikes for mechanical illegalities, including tiny motors, during major races. Such was Froome’s cadence once the Tour entered the Pyrenees two weeks ago that it could inspire observers, crazy and sane alike, to hurl obstacles in his path when no cyclists in the peloton could. The spindly Brit, born in Kenya, trained in South Africa, had essentially wrapped up the yellow jersey halfway through the Tour by riding consistently and avoiding several disastrous crashes in the early stages thanks to his robotic Team Sky domestiques. Some people, it seems, just don’t like the grandest of the Grand Tours decided so early and dispassionately, leaving the last ten stages to the mountain goats and Frenchmen in the field to fight over polka-dotted shirts and national fame.

Thankfully for spectators of this Tour de France, one of those goats was Froome’s true nemesis on the steeps, Nairo Quintana. The diminutive 25-year-old Colombian has become famous for his deadpan expression while accelerating away from heaving and gasping mountain specialists, calmly bobbing out of his saddle like a jockey on a practice gallop. The field’s reactions to Quintana’s predictable assaults on HC climbs (hors catégorie, i.e., beyond categorization) are almost always comedic in their despair and indecision, and Froome and Team Sky were no different in the latter stages of this Tour. Behind by three minutes with two competitive stages to go, Quintana and his Movistar Team first carved 30 seconds off Froome’s overall lead on stage nineteen’s ascent finish, then dropped him on the famed Alpe d’Huez in stage 20, gaining roughly another minute. It wasn’t enough to take the podium, but who cares when the magic of a motorcycled cameraman gives you cinéma vérité as brilliant as Froome’s blurry yellow jersey falling below the horizon behind Quintana in his mirrored teal sunglasses. The Tour de France is made for televised moments like this, along with the frequent Planet Earth-style helicopter shots of enviable French vacation locales.

More than anything, the Tour de France and cycling in general need riders like Quintana to challenge Froome and Team Sky’s dominance on the roads so that the fans that became so disillusioned after the Armstrong and doping scandals do not turn away out of pure ennui. If the Kardashians have proven anything, it’s that we can deal with a little enhancement, just don’t be boring. This is why cycling also needs characters among its champions like the Tour’s green jersey winner for accumulated points, Peter Sagan, a rider who’s as well-known for his weird haircuts (this year he had a decent mullet), dry Slovakian wit and no-handed finish-line wheelies as he is for his burly sprints and rouleur’s general excellence. Froome has every right to win, of course, especially if he doesn’t have a little engine in his bike, but it was a lot more fun last year to imagine why Vincenzo Nibali might have running beef with a podium girl during one of the most dominant performances in Tour history.

The Tour de France is unique among spectator sporting events in this way. The actual sporting aspect is fascinating and unfathomable in its physical tests, but the psychological and emotional toll it takes on every rider right before our eyes is the real reason to watch. Before the race starts, you can see angst on riders’ faces, caused by the prospect of wet cobblestones; on the wet cobblestones, you cringe at the ludicrous proximity of selfie-taking fans in speedos and clown makeup; and as leaders finish and take to stationary bikes next to each other for cool-down, we are privy to the kind of passive-aggressive body language and expressive hand-talking usually reserved for information desks at international airports. The Tour de France is not a summer blockbuster packed with explosions but a 21-episode binge-watch of slowly unfolding psychodramas, subtle tragedies, and the occasional slap fight, and there are so many cameras running that we never miss a second of it. It is the rare televised sport in which we can actually see the toll a competition of this magnitude takes on an athlete and the level of fortitude it takes to overcome it—none of it scripted or faked because the riders cannot waste the energy. Throw some quaint French village architecture and alpine majesty in the background, and it’s almost as if it doesn’t matter who wins.